BROWN AND REDWOOD COUNTIES. 567 



Soil and timber. 



Minnesota river at its northeast corner. Estimates of the mean elevation 

 of its townships are as follows: Sherman, 990 feet; Morgan, 1,030; Brook- 

 ville, 1,040 ; Honner, 900 ; Paxton, 1,025 ; Three Lakes, 1,060 ; Sundown, 

 1,070; Delhi, 1,000; Redwood Falls, 1,050; New Avon, 1,080; Willow Lake, 

 1,100; Charlestown, 1,120; Swede's Forest, 940 ; Kintire, 1,050; Sheridan, 

 1,070; Vail, 1,100; Waterbury, 1,125; Lamberton, 1,140; Vesta, 1,080; T. Ill, 

 R. 38, 1,120 ; Johnsonville, 1,125 ; North Hero, 1,175 ; Underwood, 1,120 ; 

 Westline, 1,150; Gales, 1,175; Springdale, 1,275. The mean elevation of 

 Redwood county, derived from these figures, is 1,090 feet above the sea. 



Soil and timber. These counties have throughout their whole extent an excellent soil, well 

 suited for the production of all the common cereals, garden vegetables and small fruits of this 

 latitude. The principal crops cultivated are wheat and oats, corn and potatoes, sorghum for the 

 manufacture of syrup, and flax for linseed oil. Stock-raising and dairying also receive consider- 

 able attention. A black soil, everywhere from one to two feet thick, and often reaching to a 

 depth of three or four feet in the depressions, forms the surf ace, being glacial drift or till, colored 

 by a small proportion of humic acid derived from decaying vegetation. This drift is principally 

 clay, with which is an intermixture of sand and gravel, with occasional but not frequent boul- 

 ders. Its composition makes it quite unfit for brick-making, but gives it a porous character, so 

 that rains and the waters of snow-melting are soon absorbed by it, excepting the large part which 

 is drained away by the gentle slopes and the numerous water-courses. Below the soil cellars 

 and wells find a continuation of this till, yellow in color and commonly soft enough to be dug 

 with a spade, to a depth of 10 to 20 feet or sometimes more, and then dark bluish and usually 

 harder to a great depth beyond, which is seldom passed through. 



The valley of the Minnesota river, 160 to 200 feet deep, has cut through this mantle of till. 

 Along this valley, and in the last two miles of the Redwood valley before it joins the Minnesota, 

 irregular knobs and ridges of gneiss and granite are exposed to view; and in some places these 

 occupy nearly the whole width between the bluffs of the Minnesota river. Generally, however, 

 the bottomland of the Minnesota river, as also of its large tributaries, are flat tracts of very fer- 

 tile fine alluvium, or interbedded sand and gravel covered by a rich soil of fine silt. These bot- 

 toms, which would be called intervals in New England, are elevated 5 to 15 feet above the 

 streams, being thus mostly within the reach of their highest floods in spring, but they are very 

 rarely overflowed during the season of growing crops. 



Both Brown and Redwood counties are mainly prairie, or natural grass-land, without tree or 

 shrub, but one continuous green sward, often reaching in gentle undulations and swells, 5 to 20 

 feet high, as far as the view extends. Yet these counties have considerable timber skirting all 

 their larger streams and lakes. A nearly continuous, though often very narrow strip of timber 

 is found immediately bordering the Minnesota river through almost its entire course; but gener- 

 ally much of the bottomland is treeless. The bluffs on the northeast side of this river have for 

 the most part only thin and scanty groves. The southwestern bluffs, on the contrary, are gen- 

 erally heavily wooded, excepting two miles next northwest from New Ulm. Next above this for 

 about fifteen miles, through Milford, Home and part of Eden townships, both the bottomland 

 and the southwestern bluff are densely timbered to a distance from the river varying from a quar- 

 ter of a mile to one mile. The greater abundance of timber on the southern bluffs of this and 

 other rivers in these regions of prairie appears to be due to their being less exposed to the sun, 

 and therefore more moist, than the bluffs on the opposite side. 



Along the Redwood river, and the Cottonwood river through Redwood county and in west- 

 ern Brown county, and along the upper part of the Little Cottonwood river, the width of wood- 

 land, excepting occasional interruptions, usually varies from a few rods to an eighth of a mile; 

 but along the last twenty miles of the Cottonwood river, and the last eight miles of the Little 

 Cottonwood, the timber generally fills their valleys, from a fourth of a mile to one mile wide. 



